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In ‘Kony 2012,’ Who Is the Audience and Who Is the Hero?

Kate Cronin-Furman is a lawyer who is pursuing a PhD in political science at Columbia University. Amanda Taub is a lawyer who teaches international law and human rights at Fordham University. They blog at Wronging Rights.

Updated March 10, 2012, 1:37 PM

The question should not be whether there is a downside to the attention social media campaigns bring to terrible problems, but rather: a downside for whom? Learning something new is always valuable for the learner. But campaigns like "Kony 2012" don’t claim to operate for the edification of the Americans they target for “awareness.” They promise that awareness is a path to solving the problems being publicized.

That’s a problematic promise. At the very least, it may lead to disillusionment for the incipient activists whom groups like Invisible Children hope to cultivate, when they realize that there is no quantity of awareness-raising wristbands that will cause Joseph Kony to abandon his fight.

No quantity of awareness-raising wristbands will cause Joseph Kony to abandon his fight.

Worse, the wild success of social media campaigns goes hand-in-hand with over-simplification of their narratives. The rapid spread of the "Kony 2012" call to arms over Facebook and Twitter owes everything to a simple, focused message with strong emotional content. But the policies that Invisible Children supports — military intervention and trials before the International Criminal Court — are not simple. Past military operations against the Lord's Resistance Army have left hundreds murdered and tens of thousands displaced, and there is evidence that the I.C.C. warrants have actually prolonged the conflict. These consequences go unmentioned in the "Kony 2012" video. Is it “good” to promise results, while hiding the potential price to be paid?

A focus on awareness also requires putting “relatable” figures center-stage. That means “whites in shining armor,” while portraying the communities affected by atrocities as helpless victims, waiting passively for American assistance. That may be good for page views, but it is bad for policy. Those communities will bear the consequences — good or bad — of interventions to end atrocities. Shouldn’t awareness be about listening to them, not drowning out their voices?